World War S 1-2

Chapter 3

But her father, Joe, spoke of a completely different experience after the burial ceremony. He said that when Lucy had surrendered her breath, the room had flooded with light; suddenly a tunnel-like opening had appeared at the other end of the room. It wasn’t like the usual daylight—as this had happened on a sparkling, sunlit summer afternoon—but more like a warm, strong, omnipresent light source. It seemed as if the light had been alive; an immensely strong love radiated from it. Joe had said that God’s love might be like this.

He also described that Lucy had a new, iridescent body that sat up in bed, and slowly floated towards the tunnel. On her face—which was not as clear in this form as on her real body—Joe had seen a peaceful smile. He had not seen what or whom she was smiling at, but it seemed that the light itself was what had given her so much pleasure. Then suddenly, he was shown pictures, running like a movie; it looked like the streaming love, which was dressed in this glorious light, projected this to the couple from Lucy’s life. Of course, Joe found himself in most of the picture—of all the bad and good experiences—as they had spent many years together. At the bad memories, or when Lucy had made a mistake in her life, the movie stopped for a moment. Joe could feel the forgiveness radiating from the light in these pauses, which had rinsed through their hearts. But at a certain moment, Lucy had to depart, leaving Joe with only this experience left.

Lucy had become a Christian a few weeks before her final day. After the visits and discussions with the local pastor, she had decided that she would accept Jesus as her savior. Joe had looked on this change skeptically; for him, having been a doctor all his life, the illness was always an illness, and mortality was simply the end of the physical life.

But he changed his way of thinking at the moment of Lucy’s death. The strange experience had rushed through his mind like an intense, life-changing waterfall, suggesting that his own soul was some kind of living, separable entity that could live after his body died. He had become a diligent churchgoer and had soon been baptized.

Julie was amazed at the change in her father, as she was not part of the Shared Death Experience. She was on the side of rationalism; as an ER doctor, she only believed in medicine and the quick intervention of resuscitation. The holistic view and other New Age hocus-pocus left her cold; she found those things repulsive. She didn’t like the liturgical, religious actions either, she thought that all those things were mere substitutes and distractions. Actually, she judged all metaphysical problems, which weren’t connected to the physical medical treatment of fixing the body, by the same standard.

Maybe that was the reason why she had studied psychology in her postgrad; she wanted to know what was going on in her father’s and other converts’ minds. Julie found the mental process that Freud only called pathological symptom interesting. According to Freud, Joe should have been sick, but in reality he was healthier than ever; he had recovered from the alcoholism, and he had reconciled the previously bad relationship with his daughters. Julie’s younger sister, Lauren, had been shocked when their father appeared on her doorstep—shaved and dressed in a clean, well-creased suit. The next surprise came when she realized that he hadn’t turned up in his shiny, polished shoes because he had run out of his pension for the month. On the contrary, he had brought gifts to his grandkids.

Due to this family experience, Julie dug deeply into all available research material; she had read all published documentation about the Near Death Experience. It had not been so hard to find something about it, as the paranormal had flooded humankind like a tsunami in the past decades. All those who didn’t believe in these new experiences were alienated or regarded as religious fanatics. Of course, Joe had argued many times: we should know that for more than two thousand years, these had been recorded in the Bible—the false prophets, clairvoyants, and mediums would multiply in the last days. It was a fact; the unseen and mysterious metaphysical world was stretching its hand to this side more and more.

Julie was not in the grace to experience an event like a Near Death Experience. She had read that it happened to many people, irrespective of their religion or worldview. Except her. That was why she offered her services and help to the Hospice Centre, she thought she might get a chance to go through the same experience many other nurses had; she would see the loving light, what Joe had described. Julie had been with many very kind people in their last moments, but it had never happened to her. I’m immune to the unseen world, she thought. I might need to believe in it first.

Julie had bad experiences when she had worked in the Emergency Room; sometimes the medical science left her feeling lonely and helpless, and she was not able to recompose the human wreckage into living bodies again. She could not get used to death; but it had become an everyday event for her. Her dad sometimes said that she must concentrate on life more.

But the tangible evidence, perfect for study, attracted her so strongly—she wanted to prove scientifically that the soul was something that existed independently.

When she had heard of one of her patients’ Near Death Experiences, she suddenly realized what she had to do. This man, who had a terrible accident with a train while stuck in his car, said he had left his body. He had flown above his car and followed the rescue operation closely. He had seen when the firefighters tried to free his body from the badly destroyed car. He had wanted to touch their shoulders as they worked, to stop them and tell them everything was all right, but his hands had gone through their bodies. They could not hear him, which had irritated him. He wanted to say that he didn’t need to be rescued anymore. Then he had climbed up again, hovering above, enjoying the bodiless state, until the emergency workers had resuscitated him. Julie wanted to base her scientific experiment on this flying-like experience.

She had changed the operating room No. 3 in Emergency for the purpose of the experiment; after consulting several psychologist colleagues outside the hospital, she had placed the copy of several simple geometrical drawings and paintings on top of the medicine cabinet on the far wall. They seemed high enough that nobody could see what was up there. Only Julie and her other ER colleague, Sarah, knew about the experiment. They had to keep it confidential if they wanted to see scientifically correct and valid results, otherwise the patients might discover it.

Everybody is hungry to know if there is a place of transcendence for their souls. Especially now, when the world crisis has swept away the remaining moral conviction of humankind, she thought. The weaklings will join the apocalyptic sects, only the strong can stay mentally normal. I don’t see this apocalypse, though, only a steep slope that has to peak at the other end.

Due to this period of moral downturn, the hospitals filled with terminal patients, homeless, and even insiders who escaped into the arms of Death from the wide-open mouth of Chaos. Julie and her colleagues had saved some of them in operating room No. 3.

But there were no results for her experiment up to now; nobody had yet had an NDE.

Suddenly, her beeper went off just as her colleague knocked on the door.

“There was a car accident, multiple severely injured coming. There’s a family, the dad looks mostly all right, the mother and son are under resuscitation. Which one do you want in No. 3? The one in more serious condition?” asked Sarah Kilmer, her ER colleague, sticking her head in the doorway. According to their previous agreement, they always rolled the most serious patients in for the experiment, but there were two very serious cases now. So Sarah offered the choice to the leader of their experiment.

“You know what? No,” said Julie, taking her white lab coat and picking up a pair of rubber gloves. “Let’s not judge this time, let’s leave it to fate. Let the paramedics choose.”

“So be it!” nodded Sarah, opening the door, letting Julie go first. “I don’t know when we’ll have the breakthrough, maybe this is the time.”

“I don’t know,” said Julie, shaking her head. “I don’t even know if we’re doing the right thing. We might be focusing too much on this experiment.”

“You shouldn’t feel guilty. I always forget our experiment when I work in No. 3. It only crosses my mind before I enter, but I’m totally for the patient once inside.”

“If only I felt the same,” Julie breathed a sigh. “It’s because of my mother. The memories are still too strong, too fresh.”

“Do you want proof that she’s well on the other side?”

“Maybe I do.”

“Is what your father sensed not enough?”

Julie wanted to give the answer nourished by her anger: that a hallucination of a befuddled alcoholic was not evidence. But finally she gave a different one: “A scientist wants something more.”

Meanwhile, the paramedics arrived; the first two ambulances brought the seriously injured. They were tirelessly trying to keep the blood circulation and the oxygen flow up until they reached the operating theatres. Two complete teams were fighting for the lives of the two patients.

Julie took over the little boy from the paramedics pushing him through the emergency entrance.

“Limb injures, possible skull fracture, and hematoma in the cranial cavity. Also, possible spine fracture. We started resuscitation eight minutes ago, his heart has restarted once already, but stopped after several beats,” said the blond doctor and let Julie take over with the respirator.

“Understood,” she said and turned to the first operating theatre. “Good job, everyone. Thank you. So we’ll try to restart this small heart.” She raised her hand to the defibrillator.

“The boy probably had an open heart operation,” the paramedic doctor added when Julie saw the long scar on the boy’s chest.

“Or had a heart transplant,” Julie concluded, putting the two electrodes on the right place. “So we’ll give another shock to this already broken heart. I hope it won’t be the last one,” she said, feeling the boy’s chances weren’t good. “Step back!”

The fragile body became strained when the electric shock hit it, and then relaxed again, but the long continuous line on the monitor didn’t want to turn into pulsating peaks, indicating the rhythmical beat of the heart. Julie tried again after a short pause.

After the second attempt, the heart kicked in and started to work again.

“Give him potassium and take him to the CT,” Julie instructed, recovering her breath after the difficulties of restarting the heart. How much has it suffered in its life? she wondered. How many times has it been restarted?

Sarah was right; in the heat of the battle for the heart, she didn’t even know which operating room they had been in. She didn’t care about her experiment anymore. Those documented Near Death Experiences were only bullshit, a phantasmagoria, random pictures generated by the high-pitched, weary nervous systems lacking oxygen.

Nothing more than that, Julie thought and left operation room No. 2. She looked into No. 3, where Sarah was still fighting for the life of the boy’s mother.

Nothing more, just the last handhold to grab the life for the imagination.

*

“I’m Salome,” Sue introduced herself, shaking hands with the couple who invited her into their flat. The crew had already been here two weeks ago to discuss every detail. They had checked the house to choose the best location for the shoot. The living room looked ideal for it. They closed the curtain because they wanted the necessary obscure ambiance, but Sue hated when they faked the production. She was not some circus magician or a witch from the corner who used these mystical elements. The scepticism of the crew led to these basic errors, when they thought this job could only be done in a half-dark room with fingers touching each other, prepared for table-moving. Damn it, no! Her medium talent worked anywhere and with anybody. Up until now …